I'm talking out of my ass here, but my guess is that such functionality would be dependent on the e-reader software. Dictionary entries are displayed as pop-up balloons in Kindles, for instance, but that has nothing to do with the internal code of the book itself. Unless you could bundle javascript functionality (or something similar) in to a book, I don't see how this would be possible without the explicit support of the e-reader software.

re: the bolded text— ...THANK YOU. That's a great idea, and one which i'm totally stealing. Kindles handle itsy-bitsy hyperlinks really well, but giving each endnote a little extra character width is just what the doctor ordered. I'm ebarrassed I didn't think of it myself; it's as if i've never read a wikipedia article in my entire life!

Feel free to steal.

I can't claim a single bit of the credit for conceiving the concept. In fact, I've found it to be fairly common practice (even in the "commercial" ebooks I purchase) nowadays. I just adopted it. I like it as an ebook creator AND as an ebook reader.

The balloon pop-up would be the perfect solution. But then again ... I'm almost certain we'll end up with 27 different implementations to account for (when coding them) by the time it becomes common-place to support the feature.

The balloon pop-up would be the perfect solution. But then again ... I'm almost certain we'll end up with 27 different implementations to account for (when coding them) by the time it becomes common-place to support the feature.

the source document is controlled by the standard so placing a title in the tag around the area needing the foot note and displaying this title should be standardized. What button to use, exactly how it will look, etc. will differ among the readers.

the source document is controlled by the standard so placing a title in the tag around the area needing the foot note and displaying this title should be standardized. What button to use, exactly how it will look, etc. will differ among the readers.

I get that. It's just that today's source documents are also supposed to be "controlled by the standard." And judging by the wide variety of implementations of ePub2's standards in practice ... I don't have a high level of confidence that future retailers/vendors and rendering engine developers are going to do any better consistently interpreting ePub3's "standard" than they did consistently interpreting ePub2's standard (not that the standard shouldn't shoulder a bit of the responsibility due to it's wishy-washy wording, but I see that same ample wiggle-room for interpretation in ePub3's wording as well).

<p> Announcer: Number 16: The <i>hand</i>.
<p> Interviewer: Good evening. I have with me in the studio tonight
Mr Norman St John Polevaulter, who for the past few years has been
contradicting people. Mr Polevaulter, why <em>do</em> you
contradict people?
<p> Norman: I don't. <sup><a href="#fn1" id="r1">[1]</a></sup>
<p> Interviewer: You told me you did!
...
<section>
<p id="fn1"><a href="#r1">[1]</a> This is, naturally, a lie,
but paradoxically if it were true he could not say so without
contradicting the interviewer and thus making it false.</p>
</section>

Are my problems over now, or are they just beginning?

I had a mind to put the footnote material IN the text because it seemed so cumbersome to code, but this looks nice.

<p> Announcer: Number 16: The <i>hand</i>.
<p> Interviewer: Good evening. I have with me in the studio tonight
Mr Norman St John Polevaulter, who for the past few years has been
contradicting people. Mr Polevaulter, why <em>do</em> you
contradict people?
<p> Norman: I don't. <sup><a href="#fn1" id="r1">[1]</a></sup>
<p> Interviewer: You told me you did!
...
<section>
<p id="fn1"><a href="#r1">[1]</a> This is, naturally, a lie,
but paradoxically if it were true he could not say so without
contradicting the interviewer and thus making it false.</p>
</section>

Are my problems over now, or are they just beginning?

I had a mind to put the footnote material IN the text because it seemed so cumbersome to code, but this looks nice.

There have been other threads on this with no perfect answer.

1) Since readers do not have a 'page foot' support, foot notes can end up at the end of a chapter (does this work if you don't break on chapters?). Endnotes are at the End of the book,right?

(note: all the 1's ) what every you do, you lose
Why the 'Spec' people have not addressed these kinds of issues by now totally eludes me. We are on the 3rd generation of EPUB fer crin' out loud.
Are these people still using Just CRT's and Paper? Because the design does not seem to consider e-ink (screen refresh) and handhelds (orientation and Aspect ratio) in general.

As others have said, those are HTML5-specific tags, which are generally not supported in epub 2. Although some HTML5 features will render fine in readers based on generic rendering engines like webkit, it likely won't work in the majority of dedicated readers. Sorry to disappoint you...

Quote:

Originally Posted by GraciousMe

And this seems to be an even bigger question than footnotes: Should I stick to ePub2?

(The irony of calling me "Connoisseur"....)

You certainly should stick with epub2 if you want your epubs to be readable on a majority of readers. BTW, no one is a Connoisseur in these matters, we all have to cope with the mess that is the epub "standard" with various "embrace + extend" quirks, and a large amount of proprietary bugs, at least for a while. Not good.